Begging for Beyonce

On my way to lunch today, I saw a homeless guy making his cardboard sign. He stood out because he looked new to the homeless community. He was cute and clean-cut, but he also stood out because he was asking passer-byers "Excuse me, how do you spell Beyonce?"

The more people who passed ignoring him, the more annoyed he became. He finally took out his frustration on a man in his late 60's, who I'm quite certain, wasn't familiar with Beyonce, much less how to spell it, but he lost it and yelled at him anyway, "Beyonce? BEYONCE! How do you spell Be-YONCE?"

Out of curiousity on my way back from lunch, I walked past him again to see what he has written. An hour later, he was still writing! He had written paragraphs. A cardboard blog, if you will, most of which was illegible.

Clearly this kid didn't know about street-saavy marketing. He was in mid-town, where there's a lot of people competing for pocket change. He needed to brand himself. You know, like the crazy guy who will give you custom insults for a dollar, or the homeless comedian, or the spitter. You've gotta have a shtick.

I thought about giving him money, then I remembered the old saying, "Give a man some change and you feed him for a day, teach a man how to beg for change, you feed him for a lifetime."